A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

A Novel

About the Book

A beautiful and compulsively readable literary debut that introduces Owen Burr—an Olympian whose dreams of greatness are dashed and then transformed by an epic journey—and his father, Professor Joseph Burr, who must travel the world to find his son. After his athletic career ends abruptly, Owen flees the country to become an artist. He lands in Berlin where he meets a group of art monsters living in the Teutonic equivalent of Warhol’s Factory. After his son’s abrupt disappearance, Burr dusts off his more speculative ideas in a last-ditch effort to command both Owen’s and the world's attention. A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall offers a persuasive vision of faith, ambition, art, family, and the myths we write for ourselves.

Book Description

A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall is an exuberant literary debut--a novel of real ideas and a playful examination of our in-between world, one that explores the nature of family, identity, art, and belief while also marking the introduction of an original new voice in contemporary fiction.

Owen Burr is the six-foot-eight, Olympics-bound senior captain of the Stanford University water polo team. In his final collegiate match, however, he suffers a catastrophic injury that destroys his hopes and dreams, flattening his entire world into two dimensions. His identity as an athlete erased but his ambition indelible, he defies his father, a classics professor who lives in a "cave" of his own making, and moves to Berlin with naive plans to make conceptual art. Then he disappears.

Without a single clue as to his son's location, Dr. Burr embarks upon a tour of public lectures from Greece to Germany to Iceland in an attempt to draw out his endangered son. Instead, he foments a violent uprising.

“Bracingly rich...the author maintains an almost thrillerlike pace while taking well-aimed shots at academic and art-market fads and helping two lost souls through essential transformations.” —

“To compare a debut novel to Infinite Jest is likely either too flippant or too generous, but...Will Chancellor’s wonderful debut novel A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall ...more than merely promising, is one of the best of the year.” —Daily Beast

“Wry, smart, tender, huge-hearted, Will Chancellor strides onto the page in the spirit of Bellow with writing poised like poetry. A dauntless debut.” —

“Owen Burr is a character unlike any you’re likely to meet in contemporary literature. Watching him move through the world, and negotiate with his own dreams, is both powerful and revelatory.” —

“A globetrotting, witty, powerful and wildly ambitious novel that is at once a psychological journey and a terrific page-turner. Will Chancellor has an electrifying, deeply original voice, and his book is so full of depth and heart that it’s impossible to put down.” —

“Simply one of the year’s finest books.” —

“Chancellor shows great poise and command with this elegant and highly enjoyable first novel, which suggests that he has even more greatness to offer us.” —

“Chancellor writes in the established tradition of the American absurd, from Pynchon and Gaddis to DeLillo and Foster Wallace. Chancellor may be swinging for the former pair, but lands firmly, and thereby accessibly, in the latter.” —

“To compare a debut novel to Infinite Jest is likely either too flippant or too generous, but consider the bona fides...Will Chancellor’s wonderful debut novel...more than merely promising, is one of the best of the year.” —

“A wild ride.” —

“Elegantly intertwines the spiritual and geographical journeys that father and son take in pursuit of fulfillment. This fusion succeeds in enriching both characters, as their trials and aspirations often run parallel. Chancellor has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and a keen understanding of how insecurity and ambition intersect.” —

“I fell in love with A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall because it…remind[s] me of the potential of literature… It is a novel that could only be written by one person, at one particular time…[and] is the most ‘alive’ book I’ve read this year.” —John Warner, The Chicago Tribune

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